If you read some historical accounts of spies, I think you'll notice there is already a massive ego/excitement boost to be had, without involving Internet fame... It's not ay l clear whether online activity would move the needle, in terms of predicting leakers.
But more importantly... Participating in online communities, and caring about one's online presence, is statistically normal behavior for working-age people in first world countries with Internet access... Moreso the younger you get. But the point is, it's massively normal behavior.
So if you tried to use your questions to predict potential leakers, you're just playing the "Most serial killers eat bread" game.
In order for your question to be a useful predictor, it would have to have low rates of both false positives, and false negatives. That doesn't seem very likely.
> "And how much do you value the opinions of online communities?"
Seems a more difficult question, but a more indicative one, which is why I included it.
Per my experience, you can easily find individuals who spend similar amounts of clock time in online communities, but are very different in how much the community can influence them.
F.ex. HN could offer me dang's karma count, and I wouldn't feel any compulsion to leak classified information here.
But more importantly... Participating in online communities, and caring about one's online presence, is statistically normal behavior for working-age people in first world countries with Internet access... Moreso the younger you get. But the point is, it's massively normal behavior.
So if you tried to use your questions to predict potential leakers, you're just playing the "Most serial killers eat bread" game.
In order for your question to be a useful predictor, it would have to have low rates of both false positives, and false negatives. That doesn't seem very likely.
reply